Scope It Out! A Flash game about telescopes. Opening Screen shows levels 0-4 and pictures of the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope. Credits: Author/Creator: Maggie Masetti Programmer: Mike Wojnarowski (formerly Kent deVillafranca) Artist: Susan Lin Project Oversight: Dr. Anita Krishnamurthi Thanks to: Jon Lawrence and Dr. Kevin Boyce Level Zero The two basic kinds of telescopes are the reflector and the refractor. Select a telescope to see the path light takes as it travels. Left hand choice: A refracting telescope works similarly to a magnifying glass. Light enters the end of the telescope where it is bent and focused by a convex (curved outward) glass lens. The light travels to the end of the tube where it is magnified by a concave (curved inward) lens in the eyepiece. For viewing ease, many modern telescopes have what is called a “diagonal” mirror at the end of the telescope that simply angles the light toward the eyepiece. Link: Who invented This? The first refracting telescopes appeared in the Netherlands around 1608. Since Galileo improved the design and popularized the telescope in 1609, he gets much of the credit! Galileo was the first to use a telescope to study space – in fact, he discovered Jupiter's four largest moons! More about refractors: You might be most familiar with a refractor telescope, at least partly because their design allows them to be very simple, compact, and portable. Astronomers as far back as Galileo have used refractors to make important discoveries. But refractors have their limits. For one thing, it’s a challenge to use lenses when building bigger and more powerful telescopes because big, powerful lenses need to be thick. (Think eyeglass lenses for very poor eyesight!) A big, thick lens is also heavy and would need to be flawless to allow light to travel through it. Additionally, refractors have a flaw called chromatic aberration, which happens when a lens doesn’t correctly focus all colors (wavelengths) of light to the same point. Reducing this effect requires increasingly long telescope tubes, allowing for a longer focal length for the telescope. What is the alternative to a refractor? Enter the reflecting telescope! [Replay animation?] [Continue?] Right-hand choice: [Animation: The girl fades out, the light path plays, the mirror locations are highlighted.] Light enters the top of a reflecting telescope and hits the primary mirror (located at the bottom end of the tube), where it is reflected and focused. The angled secondary mirror, near the eyepiece, reflects the light to where it can be easily seen by the observer. The eyepiece contains a magnifying lens to enlarge the image. Link: Who invented this? Though reflecting telescopes have been around since 1616, Sir Isaac Newton's design from 1668 was the first practical one. He added an angled secondary mirror that allowed the observer to more easily view the image created by the telescope. Newton's design is what you see here, which is why this is called a Newtonian Reflector. We will see more of another design, called a Cassegrain Reflector, later. Its arrangement of mirrors differs slightly from Newtonian Reflector, and thus it reflects light slightly differently. More about reflectors: Building large, powerful refractor telescopes can be a challenge, which is why the reflecting telescope has increased in popularity for astronomical research. Unlike a powerful lens, which would need to be thick, a mirror can be very thin. Making a large, near-perfect mirror surface is easier than creating a large, perfect lens, and because only one side of the mirror has to be reflective, they are easier to clean and polish. Because mirrors can be thin and light, they are much easier to launch into space than lenses are, which is why nearly all space telescopes are reflecting telescopes. (Reflectors also do not have the issues that refractors do with chromatic aberration, which happens when a lens doesn’t correctly focus all colors (wavelengths) of light to the same point.) [Replay animation?] [Continue?] Though these telescopes differ in how they collect and focus the light from objects in space, they look like large tubes. But do all telescopes need tubes? Let’s find out! Level One: Let’s compare our simple Newtonian reflecting telescope to the James Webb Space Telescope. The Webb doesn’t have a tube, it’s true – but it’s still a reflecting telescope, and as such, it has many of the same components. Try to figure out the major components of our simple reflecting telescope, which is shown on the left side of the screen. (Hint: There are seven of them!) Just select the part of the drawing that you think might be one of these seven components. If you guess right, you will be shown a picture of that component as well as the matching component of the Webb. Telescope Tube – Sunshield The tube of a reflecting telescope not only holds the mirrors in place, it keeps ambient light out. The tube also protects the mirrors from fingerprints and scratches. The sunshield on the Webb serves a similar purpose. Webb will observe primarily infrared light, often from very faint and distant objects. The sunshield will keep infrared light (or heat) from the Sun/ EarthMoon, as well as the spacecraft itself, from reaching the mirror and the instruments. Primary Mirror – Primary Mirror The primary mirror is the main light-gathering surface on a reflecting telescope. Traditionally, telescope mirrors are created by covering a precisely curved piece of glass with a reflective coating. A very large glass mirror would be very heavy and expensive to launch into space. Instead of glass, Webb’s primary mirror is made of beryllium, a very lightweight and strong material. Webb’s primary mirror is very large – it is over six times larger in area than the Hubble’s glass primary mirror. The mirror is made up of 18 hexagonal segments that work together as a single mirror. Fun Fact: To make the mirrors even lighter, much of the backside of each segment is cut away, leaving just a thin "rib" structure. The ribs are only about one millimeter thick. Although most of the metal is gone, the ribs are enough to keep the segment's shape steady. Secondary Mirror – Secondary Mirror A secondary mirror is the second light-gathering surface in a reflecting telescope. When light enters a telescope, such as the Newtonian reflector that we are showing here, it is gathered by the primary mirror and then reflected towards the secondary mirror, which then directs the light to where the observer can view it. The Webb also has a secondary mirror that directs the light from the primary mirror to where it can be collected by the Webb’s instruments. The path the light takes is slightly different for the Webb than for a Newtonian reflector. Observer/Eyepiece – "ISIM" Instead of a person with their eye to a magnifying eyepiece, Webb has instruments that sit right behind the primary mirror. They are contained in a box-like structure, called the "Integrated Science Instrument Module” (ISIM). The instruments are what receive the collected light and process it, just like your eye and your brain would! Focus Knob – Mirrors Though the Webb doesn’t have an eyepiece with a focus knob, it can still be focused. Webb's secondary mirror is moveable and can be adjusted to focus the telescope. In addition, all but one of the instruments have internal focusing mechanisms for fine adjustments. Each segment of Webb’s 18-section primary mirror is also adjustable so that the segments can be focused and aligned relative to each other. Viewfinder – Startrackers To locate astronomical objects in the sky, many telescopes have an attached viewfinder. A viewfinder is really a small simple refracting telescope with lenses - the magnification isn't very high, so it will allow you to easily zero in on the object you wish to observe. If you center your object in the viewfinder, it should be in the center of the field of view of your telescope. The Webb has star trackers that are used to coarsely point the telescope. During an observation, the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS), which is located in the same box as the instruments, is used for fine adjustments. Tripod – Backplane The telescope tube may hold the mirrors in place, but the tripod serves as a steady base structure for the telescope and its components. On the Webb, the mirror segments are held in place by a special backplane structure, built to keep the telescope mirrors steady. On the backside of the backplane, the ISIM box containing the instruments are attached. Level Two In Level One we showed you which parts of a simple Newtonian reflecting telescope corresponded to parts of the James Webb Space Telescope. Now, try and match them yourself! Select one of the seven components of our reflecting telescope on the left and then drag the component over the Webb Telescope to the right. Line the component up with the part of Webb you think matches, and then let go. Keep going until you have found all seven matches! Telescope Tube – Sunshield The tube of a telescope has many of the same functions as the sunshield of the Webb. Both serve as protection for their mirrors, and keep ambient light out. In the case of the Webb, the sunshield shields the telescope and instruments from infrared light (in the form of heat) given off by the spacecraft bus electronics and from the heat of the sun. Faint infrared light coming from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the early Universe, can be lost in the glare if other sources of infrared light affect the telescope.